


The Problem with Sodium

by Eloquy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Explosions, Gen, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloquy/pseuds/Eloquy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock never thought labelling his experiments was necessary. Until Lestrade came along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem with Sodium

 

 

He never thought labelling his experiments was necessary. He was smart enough to remember what was in every tube and nobody was interested enough to poke around the various jugs and bottles.

Labelling would have been a waste of time, paper and ink.

 

That is, until Lestrade came along.

Sherlock liked to say “Lestrade came along”, because it held this tiny nuance that someone actually sought his company and decided to stick with him.

If one were to ask Lestrade his views on the matter, he would describe it more by “A mad kid fell at my feet from the first floor, gripping a dealer by the collar, and then proceeded to commandeer my sofa, my work and my life.”

In the end, it was all down to the phrasing.

 

But Lestrade – he was still Lestrade at that point; Greg would come later – came along and brought with him strange ideas involving food, sleep and cleanliness.

Sherlock had learnt, if not to accept them, at least to tolerate them. It was after he found the contents of his eyeball Tupperware tucked inside his pillowcase. He knew it was payback for him throwing away every edible food contained in the fridge.

That day, he also realized that Lestrade was not afraid of playing dirty.

 

 

Still, the labelling stayed inexistent, and in Sherlock’s mind, completely irrelevant.

Until, one day, Lestrade decided to cook pasta. It wasn’t much of a noteworthy occasion in itself, as most of the time, people do indeed cook in their own flats. But the fact that Sherlock was also occupying the premises made the whole thing a bit more adventurous.

Frustrating as well, thought a thoroughly exasperated Lestrade, who couldn’t seem to find the salt even after three successive cupboards checks. At a loss, and knowing that Sherlock was not above using cooking ingredients for his experiments (the sugar and the herbicide mix was still very much present in his head), he had a quick look over the table.

And there it was. A closed jam jar, full of sandy white stuff, that decidedly looked like the sea salt he still had this morning. He grabbed a pinch of it and threw it in the saucepan.

 

In the following seconds, that went both very slowly and very fast, he acquired the certitude that what was in the jar was definitely not sea salt. It started with a low sizzling. Then the sizzling got louder. And louder. And when Lestrade turned to have a look, it was a sizzling and a flame. When he reached to take the pan out of the hob, it was an even bigger flame, and when he tried to get a better look at it, it exploded.

The pan, the water, the flame. Everything. In his face. If one part of Lestrade’s brain was still wondering how a fire could start in water, the rest of it was busy trying to assess the damage, which, it turned out, was rather minimal.

His eyebrow, ever the hero, had decided to sacrifice itself for the rest of him and had taken most of the blow.

 

Fuming, both literally and metaphorically, he stepped into the living-room with the firm resolution of introducing one part of his anatomy (fist or foot, either would do) to one detective’s other body part (face or backside). Before this could be carried out, though, he was stopped by a truly bewildered, and rather curious, look.

“Why did you put sodium in the saucepan?”

A lot of answers crossed Lestrade’s mind. They ranged from “I thought it was salt” to “Will you bloody put labels on your stuff?”, but a quick check made him realize that to most of them, Sherlock would probably oppose his trademark “But are you really that stupid?” look, and really, that was never a nice thing. There was only so much one could bear in an evening: losing a saucepan and half an eyebrow was already a considerable setback, but losing another shred of self-esteem would have been a definite blow.

 

So Lestrade took a deep breath, pursed his lips and, affecting a certain nonchalance that he frankly wasn’t feeling, answered very calmly:

“Don’t know. I like blowing things up in my kitchen.”

Sherlock nodded and went back to scribbling in the margins of his book. Lestrade, not expecting anything else, started to turn around, when he got a teasing “So do I” as an answer. He decided to let it pass, and forced himself to think of the seaside, and waves, and birds, and definitely not how to kill someone silently and dump a corpse unnoticed.

 

The pan was binned, the sodium put out of reach and nothing more was said on the incident.

 

 

 

Days later, though, Sherlock’s certitudes on the labelling issue were cruelly shaken.

 

It started with him forcefully requisitioning Lestrade’s shower and reserve of hot water, which was quite a normal occurrence, but somehow ended with him, dripping on the floor of the living-room with only a towel wrapped around his waist, and most of his body hair coming away in little lumps.  

Lestrade lifted an unconcerned eye from the newspaper and gave him a quick once-over. Face blank, he let out a low whistle.

“Labels, eh?”

The only appropriate answer to this seemed to get a wet, hairy towel thrown at his head. Lestrade didn’t mind.

The rear view of Sherlock striding angrily away from him made up for it.

 

 

 

The following day, every jar, box and test tube was labelled.

Upon closer observation, it appeared that every label also featured a character from SpongeBob SquarePants. After looking questioningly at a dancing Patrick Star for a whole minute, Lestrade got explained that those were the only labels available from the convenience shop downstairs.

Sherlock ignored his contained smirk and went on with his scribbling.

Later, when observing Sherlock working on experiments had become a regular occurrence, Lestrade realized that every product was labelled differently according to its dangerousness. If a label with Patrick denoted something mild and harmless, one sporting a grouchy Squidward was to be stayed away from, under any circumstances.

 

If he ever wondered how Sherlock got such an in-depth knowledge of sub-aquatic cartoon creatures, finding him in front of the telly on a Sunday morning gave him all the answers he could have been looking for.

**Author's Note:**

> To see how sodium reacts to water, have a look [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODf_sPexS2Q).
> 
> (Sodium in water releases hydrogen, which explodes when it comes in contact with oxygen.)


End file.
